Well yes. I’m pleased to say that the salvage operations were successful and I have a functional (not white) crafty organiser.

Here’s the finished product.

As you can see, it has lots of card-sized compartments. The outside ones hold 3×4 cards and the inner ones hold the 6×4 cards.

Like this:

I was surprised that the entire contents of my Project Life Sunshine kit fitted in a 3×4 compartment and a 6×4 compartment with still heaps of space to spare.

I’ve also put in the packs of Project Life theme cards that I recently got.

What I did was cut down the cover sheet of the packs to 6×4, cut off the title of the pack to use as a tab, and make the cover sheet into a divider to keep the theme kits together in one place and organised. Pretty neat hey.

Today I was going to post a photo of my super new scrapbooking organiser that I was going to use for my Project Life supplies this year. I was going to have it all set up today, with all the cards neatly organised and it was going to look brilliant.

There are a couple of examples of what it could look like on that page.

Mine currently looks like this:

I’ve only ever done one similar project, a desk caddy, and I remember it took me a long time to finish. There were a few little tricks and tips that I probably picked up during that project, but had totally forgotten about when it came time to do this one.

So for my own future reference, here are some things to keep in mind when putting together one of these “beyond the page” products.

All of these are extremely obvious to anyone except me.

If you’re covering any of the panels in paper, only do the inside walls and panels before you put the thing together. If you want the paper to cover the join between the panels and the base, don’t cover the outside panels until you’ve put the thing together.

If you do cover the outside panels first, only cut out the slots on the inside. Don’t cut out the slots on the outside or you’ll be able to see the bottom of the tabs when it’s assembled. (Yes, I really did this. Luckily I had another sheet of the paper so I could cover it over again.)

Paint getting into the slots where the tabs of the panels goes makes the slot thicker and makes it harder to slide the tabs together. Don’t get paint in there, or the whole thing will not go together very easily. (Hammer anyone?)

The chipboard drawers are horrible. If anyone knows how to get them to hold together, I’d love to know.

The recommendation in the instructions that you cover the entire front panel, including the front of the drawer, with a single piece of paper results in a lovely unbroken look, but it is a pain in the arse to get lined up exactly.

Anyway having learned all this the hard way, by lunch time today (I’ve been working on this on and off over the last few days, sticking, painting, waiting for stuff to dry) everything was finished and all I needed to do was seal it with a coat of Gesso.

Sorry, you said Gesso?

Yeah. That’s the stuff that seals everything so the paper will be a bit more durable. I used it on the desk caddy I did a couple of years ago. It gives it a nice finish. Goes on white, dries clear.

And what was the damage after that little painting frenzy? Let’s see . . . the base, the back, the side that I’d already re-covered once because point 2 above, the front that I had painstakingly managed to keep as an unbroken piece to line up with the drawer (point 5), and of course, the drawer itself.

Unfortunately the photos don’t show the tail. The skill, imagination and improvisation used to create the final part of the costume should put me fairly and squarely in the running for Crafty Mama of the Year.

This week is Book Week. Juniordwarf’s school is having a Book Week Parade and the kids are all encouraged to dress up as a character from their favourite book.

Two years ago he wanted to be The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I did this.

Last year he was a pirate, which was easy because he already had a pirate costume.

This year he said he wanted to be The Cat In The Hat.

I figured this wouldn’t be too hard, and set about planning how I was going to do this

I always thought one of he fun things about primary school-age kids would be doing stuff like making costumes. You know, in all that spare time I have. Yeah.

I can remember my mother making me a Wild Thing costume in primary school for something our class was doing around the book Where The Wild Things Are.

(It looked like this:)

I assume I could actually breathe in this outfit

I figured if my mother could create such a thing out of an old blanket, I could come up with a cat costume pretty easily. Black pants, a black and white top, a tail and OH MY GOODNESS HOW THE HELL DO YOU MAKE HATS?

(Luckily a nearby craft supply store just happened to stock red and white striped hats exactly like the one the Cat in the Hat wears, which I discovered when I went in to get my supplies for this crafty endeavour. Enormous relief.)

I got out the sewing machine. Yes the very same sewing machine I got for Xmas two years ago and had not actually used. The same sewing machine listed at Number 24 on my 100 things to do in 2013 list(24. Sew something. Anything. Just use the damn sewing machine!).

Once I worked out how to thread it (which could be a whole post in itself – my mother’s old basic Bernina it is not), it was time for action.

The black pants were going to be easy. I based them on the same pattern I used for the caterpillar costume.

OK, not quite so easy. Fluffy polar fleece isn’t quite as easy to sew as I thought it would be. I mean, it moves when you sew it. What kind of sorcery is this?

Anyway, I got there eventually. The pants were done. I’m totally rocking this crafty mama thing.

I didn’t have any sweatshirt patterns. No drama. How hard can it be? It’s just four pieces right? A front, a back and two sleeves. So I can just trace one of his sweatshirts and copy that.

Oh, you know what? You should have sewed the sleeves into the shoulders before you sewed up the side seams.

Well I’ll just trace the top of the sleeve using the arm hole as a guide, extend it to the length of his arm, and narrow it in at the bottom. Then I can just sew the sleeve in to the arm hole. No worries.

NO WORRIES? WHAT, ARE YOU KIDDING? HAVE A LOOK AT THIS! THE SLEEVES AREN’T WIDE ENOUGH! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO “MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE?”

True. In most garments the sleeves actually join up under the arm.

Bugger.

By this time I was getting somewhat frustrated at this whole exercise. Who said the crafty mama thing was fun? I actually wanted to do this? What was I thinking?

Juniordwarf was watching me. “So I don’t think this is going to be a very good costume,” I said to him.

He looked at me.

Then said, “I don’t mind. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, I don’t want it to be perfect.”

I thought back to where I’d heard this before. It had come from Juniordwarf’s teacher. His class is doing Art this term, and the teacher has been stressing the point very strongly that their art doesn’t have to be perfect and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look exactly like what they’re drawing and painting or if it doesn’t look the same as anyone else’s work. The idea is to capture what they see and reproduce it the way they see it themselves – so how one child sees something and draws it will be different to how any other child sees it.

The displays around the classroom are testament to this, and it’s fascinating to see each child’s style in their work.

While I was thinking about this, Juniordwarf then proceeded to quote what I’ve often said to him, right back at me. “It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. We all make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn.”

And you know what struck me most? That while I’m encouraging him not to be hard on himself and not set himself impossible standards, I continue to expect myself to be perfect and to never make a mistake.

It’s not going to be enough for him to hear these messages is it? I can’t really tell him not to seek perfection if I continue to expect it of myself. He’ll catch on to that one day, and how am I going to explain that?

“Well . . . it’s OK for you not to do things perfectly, but I’m different. I have to.”

Not really convincing is it? I’m not different.

So for him to truly embrace these messages, he has to see them in action. That means he has to see me make mistakes and see how I learn from them. He has to see me accept less than perfect. He has to know that I believe what I’m saying. And therefore, I have to believe it.

Maybe I should go back to Grade 1.

(P.S. Costume is not quite finished . . . but it will fit him and I expect it will hold together for a day. So all is well.)

What I mean is, he played in his sandpit while I spent hours clearing out vegetation from various parts of our yard. Then he wanted me to fill his little clam shell pool up.

I didn’t want to say no, because I’d already told him we weren’t going to the pool today and I didn’t want to disappoint him again. But the clam shell pool is located off to the side of the house, under shadecloth, in the fenced off area where the dog can’t go, and I was working in the main yard.

He’s not at the age where he can be left unsupervised in water, so I had a problem.

Luckily there was a shady area just near where I was working, and the beauty of the clam shell pool is that it can be detached from the sand pit part and moved. So that’s what I did, and Juniordwarf played happily in his pool while I continued the clearing out process.

Win-win.

After he got out and had dried off, I told him he could put his same clothes back on. He didn’t want to, and insisted wearing an ensemble that included the green stripy pants that I’d made for his Very Hungry Caterpillar costume for Book Week.

Ok, well they weren’t intended for general wear, but he didn’t seem to care. He put on his antenna headband and his pirate eye patch and announced that he was ‘the Pirate Caterpillar’.

I’m just glad that something I made has actually been worn more than once.

And . . . now that I have my very own sewing machine (courtesy of Lil Sis, Mr Tall and my mother), I’ll be able to get out the pants pattern I used for the costume and make some more pants for Juniordwarf that fit around the waist and in the legs – something that has proven to be more and more of a challenge when shopping for clothes.

Year in Review (8/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

A post, and a day, I am really proud of. Somewhere between the miserable post from July that I posted yesterday and this one, I started to feel like I could make some of the changes in my life that I think I need to make. This is an example.

A few years ago, in a rare fit of Xmas nostalgia, I bought a ‘beyond the page’ wooden Xmas tree from Kaisercraft.

Kaiser had a few example trees on their website and in their workshop magazine, but they all looked a bit too, well, Christmassy. (Yes, it is a “Christmas” product, designed especially to count down the days until 25 December, so um . . . if you don’t like Christmas stuff, why did you buy it?)

Not being a huge fan of the traditional seasonal decorations (cue blog post on why I shall call the 25 December festival whatever I want to, and how I find it weird to be doing wintery stuff in the middle of summer*, and how I rather despise fake snow), I wanted to make mine look a bit more ‘summery’. So I went for red and gold colours to look a bit like the sun. It didn’t really work – it still looks Xmassy. Never mind. At least it doesn’t have fake snow!

This year is the first time Juniordwarf has really been interested in the festive season, and he has designated himself as the official day changer on the tree.

I’ve also come up with some grand plans for the seasonal tree that we’ll be decorating soon. The plans don’t include snow or holly. I might be persuaded to use some tinsel. Maybe.

*You wouldn’t actually know it’s summer here right now. But according to the calendar it is.

This weekend is our local Garden Club’s Flower and Horticultural Show.

The show is mainly for flowers, but there are sections for things like produce, home brewing and photography, and there’s also a kids’ section.

For Juniordwarf’s age group, there were classes for photographs and for models of a flower.

I asked Juniordwarf if he wanted to make a flower during the week for the show, and he was very keen. He said he wanted to make flowers from felt, which luckily we had, so he used his developing cutting skills to cut out three different coloured flowers. He then stuck green icy pole sticks to them for stems and foam circles to the middle.

This morning we weren’t sure what to put them in, and thought of filling a jar with dirt and topping it with grass, then sticking the flowers in so it looked like they were in the lawn. So we went outside to do that, then headed off to the show, with Juniordwarf very proudly carrying his little jar of flowers.

Unfortunately we had a little hiccup on the way, with the flowers falling out in the wind*. This upset the poor little boy terribly, but I rescued them and told him we’d fix it when we got inside.

Once we’d set his model up with the other entries, it was time to go and let the judges do their work.

* Note for next time: if you’re going to push things into grass, make sure you push them all the way through the grass into the dirt below.